Study shows U.S. residents falling behind in years lived

Annabelle Batista

Tuesday

Aug 21, 2007 at 12:01 AM

If you are like the majority of Americans, you are probably feeling good right now, and maybe even better, as you read this. Last year, 66 percent of Americans said they were in “excellent” or “very good” health, according to a survey released by the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics. However, despite what US citizens think about their well-being, Americans’ overall health ranked 72nd in a list of 191 nations included in a 2000 study by the World Health Organization. As American citizens reported, life is sweet. But as the saying goes, unfortunately, research suggests that it is also short. International numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics reveal that life expectancy in the United States ranks 42nd in the world. The rank has slipped since two decades ago, when only the citizens of ten countries could expect to live longer lives than Americans. Now Japan, most of Europe, Jordan, and the Cayman Islands are among those countries that surpass the U.S. in terms of life expectancy. A baby born in 2004 in the United States will live an average of 77.9 years. This is an improvement by American standards, but it still does not compare with Andorra, whose average citizen will live to be 83.5 years old. Apparently, one of the most modern and powerful nations in the world has lower standards of health than a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain. There is one area, though, where the United States comes out on top. The United States spends more on health care, both as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) and on a per-capita basis, than any other nation in the world. Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, noticed an incongruency. He said, “Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries.” Even though so much money is spent yearly on health care in the United States, the institution has drawn criticism, and not only from Michael Moore, the director of the recent movie, Sicko. Some researchers cite the American health care system as a major factor for why the United States is falling behind other industrialized nations in terms of life expectancy. They say that while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, 45 million Americans lack health insurance. Along with South Africa, the United States is the only industrialized nation without universal health care. Of course, “it’s not that easy” as Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal said. “It’s not as simple as saying we don’t have national health insurance.” That is, the United States has other health issues that health insurance would not necessarily relieve. Obesity, for one, has been considered as a factor in lowering life-expectancy. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, and two-thirds are overweight. Overweight can lead to a variety of health problems, from cardiovascular disease and diabetes to asthma and stroke. Another factor lowering the average life span is the amount of American infants dying before their first birthday. In 2004, the United States had a higher infant mortality rate than forty other countries, including Cuba, Taiwan, and most of Europe. Specifically, there were 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births among white Americans. For African-Americans, that number was 13.7 per 1,000. “It really reflects the social conditions in which African-American women grow up and have children,” said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. “We haven’t done anything to eliminate those disparities.” The issue of the United States’ low life-expectancy may go beyond the health insurance debate. While Murray, from the University of Washington, said that improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy, the U.S. rank won’t significantly improve without focusing on other factors. Reducing cancer, heart disease, and lung disease should be among the chief concerns of policymakers, said Murray. (Annabelle Batista will be a senior in the fall at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham and is an intern at The Gardner News.)

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